Photo: Imelda Staunton as Vera in Mike Leigh's Vera Drake
From Life is Sweet to All or Nothing, Mike Leigh's kitchen-sink melodramas may detail the lives of the Brit lower class, but they resonate on a universal scale. That's because Leigh, like Robert Altman, recognizes the commonality of the human condition in the way we talk to one another. In Vera Drake, actress Imedla Staunton further enriches this vernacular, and like Timothy Spall in All or Nothing, she evokes the truth of human existence in the way we look at and give back to the world. Leigh is a master of contrast, brilliantly cutting back and forth between rich and poor stratas of society in an attempt to compare modes of communication within a close-knit community, and in so doing asserts that these kinds of interactions are echoes of our moral and spiritual centers. Ed Gonzalez
From Life is Sweet to All or Nothing, Mike Leigh's kitchen-sink melodramas may detail the lives of the Brit lower class, but they resonate on a universal scale. That's because Leigh, like Robert Altman, recognizes the commonality of the human condition in the way we talk to one another. In Vera Drake, actress Imedla Staunton further enriches this vernacular, and like Timothy Spall in All or Nothing, she evokes the truth of human existence in the way we look at and give back to the world. Leigh is a master of contrast, brilliantly cutting back and forth between rich and poor stratas of society in an attempt to compare modes of communication within a close-knit community, and in so doing asserts that these kinds of interactions are echoes of our moral and spiritual centers. Ed Gonzalez
